These are all my tweets. I stand by them:

Science teacher: Twitter is creepy: "We wield phenomenal power over students. We forget this at our (and our students') peril."

Caring is creepy. So is teaching, really. Life is pretty creepy if you think about it. Maybe I should stop being offended when Michael calls me creepy. Or maybe "...this is way beyond my remote concern of being condescending." Rock on.

My first summer camp at Spartanburg Day School starts on Monday and I've lovingly titled it "Griffin Mythbusters." The setup goes something like this. The ~20 5-9th Graders that have signed up and I will start Monday by hammering out a good urban myth to examine. It might be something covered on the TV show or it might be something completely local (which is what I hope). I'm giving them the choice, though. Then we'll split up into a couple of build teams, a research team, and a supplies team. They'll rotate through the teams throughout the week as we work on models to explore the myth. By Friday, I'm hoping that we'll have successfully nailed down the best way to do a major demonstration to either confirm or bust the myth in question. We'll be live blogging (and reflective blogging) the whole thing here:

Griffin Mythbusters - Spartanburg Day School Summer 2010: "We're busting (or confirming) urban myths using science at Spartanburg Day School."

I chose to use Posterous as the platform for our site since it allows for easy collaboration, team members can post quickly via their mobiles on the go and they can send things out to their Facebook or Twitter profiles if they'd like to share what they're up to with their friends. Of course the main reason to do all of this is to plant the seed of scientific method into their heads without making them memorize a chart. And to blow things up. I'm excited. Grab the Griffin Mythbusters feed if you'd like to follow along and see how things go on our one week adventure.

I finally broke down and bought a reel mower today. I mowed half of our property. It was fantastic. Then I ate a pear from one of the fruit trees on our property. It wasn't quite ready, but it was still fantastic. I think today will make me a better science teacher.

From Discovery Education (warning, it's a PDF). It's taken me 31 years and I can barely tell the difference between the two if at all. The trick is to help students realize that science wasn't (magically) discovered in the 1600's by Galileo (as this guide would have us to "believe"). Nor has science progressed on an upward curve to its current level of awesomeness. Like the rest of humanity, science has had its ups and downs but the myth of a progression of enlightenment is hubric and dangerous. That's not to say that we should inject science with flights of philosophical fancy. However, Athens still has a great deal to do with Jerusalem and CERN has a great deal to learn from both. Otherwise, you end up like them.

I wish this was my classroom. I taught my daughter more about rock geology today than I could ever have taught her under the glare of noble gas light in a square (or rectangle) room. We even touched on biology in a discussion of bivalves (her new necklace) and dead dragonfly's. Then as the summer afternoon thunder came, we discussed barometric pressure, the speed of sound waves, mediums and atmospheric science. As a wise science teacher once said, we can't teach science under fluorescent lights. Heartstrings pull.

I'm terribly excited to head to the local bookstore to pick up Sam Kean's new book on the periodic table today. For some strange reason, I find the periodic table a fascinating symbol of humanity in our continuing attempts to understand the universe around us. There is much more than just chemistry wrapped up in its columns and rows. Maybe I've read too much Oliver Sacks. Nevertheless, I try to convey that sense of awe to my students. You can read more about Kean's book on this NPR segment about The Disappearing Spoon. Good stuff.

Love this post (and this blog):

Science teacher: Coffee, slide rules, and educated children: "We don't use slide rules anymore, we use far more powerful tools. What are we doing?"

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